yes, again, goldberg and hayes resigned. they're barely on because everyone knows they don't support trump so they're not even invited over there. >> right. >> so it's tough. >> and as you and i -- the media, the other journalists still try to treat them as a normal journalistic outlet. >> super quick. democrats should not be on fox news ever. >> indeed. thank you, eric, that's a nice reidout. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. hopefully we have this today, right? >> we shall see. >> we shall see. >> new subpoenas from the january 6 committee for trump confidant roger stone, alex jones, including trump's current spokesperson. then -- >> what a beautiful thing, huh? not guilty on all counts. >> the dangerous celebration of a kid who killed two people. plus the internal pushback at fox news as the channel goes f

ul maga. and paul krugman on what could be the most single most consequential decision of the biden presidency. >> some may wonder why i'm renominating jay, why not pick a democrat. >> when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. roger stone, long-time infamous republican political operative, dirty trickster dating all the way back to the richard nixon administration. he likes richard nixon so much he's got a tattoo on his back. he's also donald trump's henchman and fixer which is why in 2019 stone was convicted of seven felony counts stemming from the russia investigation, including obstruction of the investigation, lying to investigators and witness tampering. that then only resulted in president trump commuting his sentence in july 2020 just in

time for stone to help plan the january 6 insurrection. stone appeared at multiple stop the steal events and just this evening he was subpoenaed by the bipartisan house committee investigating insurrection. according to the subpoena, you reportedly spoke on january 5th at rallies at the u.s. supreme court held by a group affiliated with the right-wing militia the 3%ers and used members of the oath keepers as personal security guards, several of whom were reportedly involved in the attack on the capitol. you stated that you were invited to lead a march to the capitol on the ellipse rally on january 6. the ellipse rally is that rally that took place just before the mob descended upon the capitol and it's where donald trump spoke and whipped up the crowd and told them we're all going to march down to the capitol. in a statement stone denied any advance knowledge of the insurrection or involvement in the planning. he said he has not been served a subpoena but he was just one of

five targets of subpoenas today. they also want to hear from alex jones, the disgraced right-wing conspiracy theorist who just lost a defamation lawsuit over his allegations that the sandy hook shooting was a hoax. he was sued by family members of those who were killed. jones repeatedly promoted donald trump's lie of election fraud including on the night of january 5th where he said this. >> we have already begun to resist the globalists. we have already begun our fight against our tyranny. they are trying to try to steal this election in front of everyone. as i told them 20 years ago, i tell them again. i don't know how all this is going to end. but if they want to fight, they better believe they have got one. >> boy, real kind of form and content merger with some unsettling historical

references. the white house told you on or about january 3rd, 2021, that you were to lead a march to the capitol where president trump would meet the group. you did in fact march from the ellipse to the capitol. the subpoena has subpoenaed two people we haven't heard that much about, dustin stockton and jennifer lawrence, a couple heavily involved in stop the steal rallies and the bonnie and clyde of maga world. stockton's subpoena said he was in contact with trump and chief of staff mark meadows and he wanted to warn trump about the possible danger. you were reportedly concerned about plans by the stop the steal movement to organ unpermitted march that would reach the steps of the capitol as congress gathered to certify the election results. in a statement the couple said they are committed to transparency. finally the committee wants to

hear from trump associate taylor butterwitch. according to his subpoena he offered an organization $200,000 from an undisclosed source to plan social media and radio advertisements for the stop the steal rally at the ellipse on january 6. roger stone and alex jones are notorious trolls and notorious figures. the extent of their cooperation in this investigation truly remains to be seen, especially since steve bannon, who is a similar kind of guy, has been criminally indicted for contempt of congress for refusing to appear before the committee and turn over documents. now the committee is warning they're going to try to do the same to former chief of staff mark meadows who has so far defied the committee subpoena. today's subpoena make clear that a significant number of public figures in trump's orbit were at the very least aware something was going to happen after that january 6 rally by donald trump. the question is what. joining me now are two reporters

who have been doing stellar reporting on the events surrounding january 6th and the investigation currently under way, betsy woodruff swan and luke broadwater of "the new york times." betsy, let me start with you on stone. i may be recalling this incorrectly but i think stop the steal was a phrase that stone was using in the run-up to the 2016 election sort of prophylactically to discredit an anticipated hillary clinton win. and that has carried over and he was really central to the stop the steal drumbeat in 2020 and always around the kind of orbit of trump. how do you -- i guess you're not surprised by the subpoena, but how would you characterize his role as we know it so far? >> it's a good question. stone is part of this constellation of far right media personalities who sort of feed on the notoriety that they

experience and are almost indefatiguable in terms of any press over the activity they have engaged in over the course of their professional lives. alex jones is in this category, steve bannon is in this category. they are people that are not formally part of trump's companies or part of his campaigns or the administration that he ran but that are close enough by association that they can engage in activity that moves the ball forward for trump without necessarily producing backlash for him by virtue of being part of the administration itself or part of the campaign itself. and that's why the stop the steal term is something that fits so seamlessly into what trump himself would say. it was a term that was helpful for roger stone to use, that he and ali alexander really promoted and pushed out there as this encapsulation of what was going wrong and what needed to be done and that was very easy

for trump to adopt because more than anybody else, roger stone is fluent in trump and he knows how to produce slogans and commentary that fit into his vernacular. >> luke, i was also reminded by these subpoenas, i remember at the time seeing alex jones crop up. he's someone that, again, is in that circle. i had forgotten how present he was actually until i read these subpoenas. i thought that bit about how the subpoena says that he was told by the white house to lead the march, which you've been reporting on this so closely. is that new information? did we know that already about that allegation at least as stipulated in the subpoena letter? >> well, the january 6 committee has certainly put a highlighter right across that. it's actually something alex jones says on his whatever you call it, internet show, the day after the attack on the capitol. he's out there, he's claiming

antifa did this, all sorts of wild conspiracy theories. but he says in the course of this long rant that the white house contacted him three days before january 6th, told him to lead a march on the capitol. he said the secret service would show them where to go, and that trump would tell the crowd go to the capitol and i'll meet you there. now, trump in fact does tell the crowd to march to the capitol, he does promise to meet them, he tells them to fight like hell and then he doesn't show up. but alex jones does make the march along with ali alexander. so the committee has been doing a good bit of listening not only to stephen bannon's podcast but alex jones' and picking up on details people are saying out in public but take some unearthing to dig up and piece together where you can put all the puzzle together the way the committee wants to, to lead to the conclusion of what happened on january 6th. >> that's a great point.

i mean this sort of hiding in plain sight aspect to it which we've seen at the lower level, the people that have been indicted, the hundreds and hundreds of arrest, many of whom documented what they were doing on social media, confessed to what they did on social media and then you just had to go find the stuff which is being used as ed against them. it wasn't like the january 6 rally or even the plan to go to the capitol, betsy, was private as donald trump says now we're going to march down to the capitol and i'm going to come with you and we have to fight like hell. we all saw that happened. these two involved in the planning of the rally, dustin stockton and jennifer lawrence, not that jennifer lawrence, i want to play a little stockton to get a sense for him. take a listen. >> obviously we know what's going to happen at the capitol and that we need these legislators to do the right thing. we need them to look at the

evidence that this election was stolen and then do the right thing because if our votes don't count, nothing counts. we're going to try to give you guys realtime updates about what's happening in the capitol, if it goes to the supreme court, and where we need people to be. >> i thought that last line, betsy, was pretty striking given the subpoena, where we need people to be and realtime updates. >> yeah. so many of the comments that people made on january 5th and january 6th operate as a rorschach test. the speakers can say i didn't call for people to go into the capitol or engage in violence. alex jones said he was telling people as the attack unfolded not to engage in violence because it was colluding with the globalists or something with that effect. but when you have a massive crowd of people who are extremely exorcised and you make comments like that one, the big question is what did you think was going to happen?

another big question is why didn't trump go to the capitol building? a third big question is specifically what's going on with stockton's involvement with the committee? we reported a couple of weeks ago that he had answered some questions from investigators there. clearly they aren't satisfied with everything because they have issued a subpoena. what's the back story there is something we're tracking closely. one last thing out of this batch of subpoenas to the hiding in plain sight point is it highlighted the fact that a guest host on alex jones' radio show on december 31st explicitly talked about people going into the capitol building itself. you can't organize a rally secretly, you can't plan these types of marches secretly, it all has to be overt. that's why the work the committee is doing to bring together these massive tranchions and bring together

this, a lot is public already. >> the subpoena letter to stockton basically says you were kind of a whistleblower, at least shared your concerns. this is one of the things that it says. together with ms. cremer you reportedly escalated your shared concerns to katrina pierson. she has also been subpoenaed. so there is a stipulation in this subpoena letter to stockton that he was concerned, freaked out, trying to get the white house to do something about it, which again seems new to me. >> right. i believe he made those comments in the politico magazine article. right. so he's one of the people who's planning this rally. he sees they're going to bring all these people to the capitol. he knows some of them are going to be very angry based on what they're being told. he actually gets kind of worried and says we probably need some better security. can we get this up to the chief of staff, mark meadows.

and so there's a number of people that day who do say things about fomenting down the violence. even alex jones, as betsy points out, says be peaceful. but then he's also directing them to the west side of the capitol where the worst of the violence breaks out. so it's a bit of both. they're doing things to escalate tensions, to spread lies, to spread fear, to spread anger, and then saying don't go too far sometimes. so it's a lot of walking people right up to the line and then seeing what happens. >> yeah. and there's a very -- i mean i'll editorialize here, you guys are straight reporters. but there's a very -- there's a kind of plausible deniability aspect that hangs over all of this. intelligence agencies will run an operation that they want to have kind of plausible

deniability or arm's-length distance. well, we never authorized that you could go do that black bag job. there's a feeling to that like none of the connections are quite there, there's never any order given but a lot of stuff happens and is encouraged at arm's length that maybe you could plausibly deny but we also saw one plus one makes two. that's my estimation. betsy woodruff swan and luke broadwater, thank you both. >> thank you. has tucker carlson gone too far even for his fellow on-air talent? the breaking point for two contributors resigning in protest and the host reportedly pushing back behind the scenes, after this. shing back beh ind th after this

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congresswoman cheney, there is talk now, talk, that january 6th was a false flag operation, that it was a case of liberals and the deep state setting up conservatives and trump supporters. is there any truth to that? >> none at all. you know, it's the same kind of thing that you hear from people who say that 9/11 was an inside job, for example. it is -- it's unamerican to be spreading those kinds of lies and they are lies. >> the sunday after tucker carlson's crazy special came out suggesting the january 6th attack was a false flag operation staged by the government, his fellow fox news host, chris wallace, invited republican liz cheney to ask her

if that was true. and at the time it appeared that it was a little bit of a dig at his colleague. well, we are now learning there was a little more to it. veteran figures on fox's news side, including political anchors bret baier and chris wallace, shared their objections about the tucker carlson false flag special with suzanne scott and its president of news, jay wallace, but nothing happened. now, two conservative fox news commentators have resigned, pointing his tucker's conspiracy-laced special as the breaking point. the media correspondent for the npr news joins me now. david, what can you tell me about the reaction inside? when that trailer came out and the actual thing, people thought, whoa, this is galling. and just beyond the pale. and it seems like that was the reaction at least of some people inside the building. >> not just a handful either.

i think that there was a growing sentiment among people on the news side, and not exclusively the news side, that this was different and that this was dangerous. that what tucker carlson was doing was in a sense gathering up a lot of the strain that he had amplified or touched on in his various broadcasts since the january 6th siege of the u.s. capitol and tied it together in a narrative, giving credence to every claim, allegation, characterization and conspiracy theory seemingly that he had run across in furtherance of undercutting both the seriousness of what occurred on january 6th and also the connection of trump supporters and anyone in sort of the larger trump circle with what happened on that day and what led up to it. and, you know, there had already been not just hand wringing but angst and acrimony internally

about the role that some fox opinion personalities played in fueling the emotions that led to not just the so-called stop the steal rally on that day but what followed. but in terms of carlson's claiming that there were perhaps false flag elements, that is protesters there who were really antifa or other leftists that were anti-trump fueling this pro trump movement, despite what arrested pro trump supporters said about their involvement that day really was shocking to people. they said these are people we do not give credence to on fox news' news programs and these are things that our own reporting have already disproved. >> there's a difference between the news and editorial side than a hard and fast distinction. but i will say that part of it too is -- there's a broader thing happening here, which is that that show is really vile.

and vile in a way that is, i think, distinctive qualitatively from other things on the network and other things they have done before. it's clearly the focus of internal dissent more broadly than just this instance that is happening inside and getting nowhere is my takeaway from your reporting. >> one of the questions i asked the two commentators, conservative anti-trump commentators who resigned, steve hayes and jonah goldberg was why this? after all the things that we have seen, the lies that were propagated about presidentfraud 1/6 siege and the siege itself. all the rhetoric leading up to this election and why this? they said it was the straw that broke the camel's back and it

was too much for them to abide anymore. that they were trying to offer a counterargument wasn't happening anymore. they acknowledged what you and i can see from the outside, opinion is more the point at fox news. it's not the reason people gravitate towards them, it's not the point of the enterprise, it's not the engine that drives them or their profits. opinion has become so big and also, you know, tucker carlson and pro trump sentiment has become so sprawling that the top executives seem to feel they can't control it. and i think that's what you're seeing right now at fox news in a sense is you don't have -- roger ailes was a tyrant, roger ailes proved to be a sexual predator. on the other hand, he never let a figure at fox get bigger than the network. we saw that when he essentially ejected glenn beck from that network. >> that is true. we should note also here it's just a matter of public record that the network's own lowers

argued successfully in court that the host and show in question, tucker carlson, is not news and should not be believed. and that essentially -- and that it is so over the top, if you believe it, it's like sucker, buyer beware. they used this to defend against a claim of slander or libel. i think it's noteworthy that has been deployed successfully that what the network's own official legal status of what comes out of that show is. >> yeah. you know, lawyers will occasionally say that's a very useful defense to have, but they need it in the case of some of these more incendiary programs making more wild, outrageous and untrue claims. in the case of tucker carlson, what you're not hearing is the network defend him or defend the facts. i've asked the question numerous times about this and other claims carlson has made and they just point back to carlson's own claims. they're not standing by it. a news organization, even an

opinion-laden news organization should be able to defend the factual basis of what it presents, even when it's strongly opinionated. fox isn't doing that here because they have already in a sense had their own news side undercut any foundation for making this credibly with a straight face. carlson doesn't care. he's interested in scoring points. he's interested particularly in getting in a back and forth with the rest of the media so that it's all vitriol and all open for debate. >> he's also interested in cashing the millions of dollars of checks. david folkenflick, thank you very much. >> you bet. as the right celebrates the rittenhouse acquittal, vigilanteism is an active threat to society. what can be done about it, ahead. ociety what can be done about it, ahead. esn't ha restaurant. if she did, it would be impossible to get in. she'd become famous overnight. she'd get talked into franchising everything.

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basically the united states was listed for the first time as a, quote, backsliding democracy in a report issued by a european think tank. the stockholm-based international institute for democracy referred to the u.s. as the bastion for global democracy but noted that our country fell victim to authoritarian tendencies and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale. you will notice that "the washington post" chose to illustrate this with a photo of the insurrectionist mob facing off against police officers on january 6th. that day of course is the most striking example of our democratic backsliding. but this report reflects something deeper that is happening in our political culture and something we document often here. one faction in particular on the american right is giving up on some of the basic tenets of liberal democracy. they are giving up on the rule of law and the nonviolent use of civic action to settle political differences and turning towards

much darker traditions. they have flourished at moments throughout our own history. the lynching of black americans in the 19th and 20th century, the redeemers in the south. various other forms of vigilantes and other forms of violence are not alien to us. they are part of our traditions as well but the opposite of our best traditions. they are the opposite of the better angels of our nature as lincoln put it. and we're seeing enthusiasm, support for that kind of model cropping up again in the idea among some on the far right growing, embodied by trump, that politics is nothing but sheer will to power. the strong must conquer their enemies. that idea is completely antithetical to the ethos we have, to the extent we have one in this country, collective self self-governance are -- things

are mediated by our shared institutions and i think that notion, the notion that is the opposite of vigilanteism and a repudiation is what kyle rittenhouse represents. last summer kyle rittenhouse, the person, the child in the eyes of the law, did something indefensibly stupid and reckless and went to a protest in the aftermath of police violence armed with a semiautomatic rifle and killed two people, wounding a third man. he has done literally irreparable harm to those three families, irreparable harm. and last week he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. the same people have been casting aspersions on our constitutional safeguards are turning around and championing that jury and its decision. independent of what anyone may think about the verdict, the idea that kyle rittenhouse is in any way a victim, a martyr or

god forbid a hero is deranged and despicable. one that is totally incompatible with a healthy liberal democracy. this view of rittenhouse is not just coming from the fringes, it goes from the far right to the more moderate center of the republican party. >> what a beautiful thing, huh? not guilty on all counts. kyle rittenhouse did not deserve the ordeal he went through, but he certainly deserved today's verdict. >> for me, laura, the defining aspect of kyle rittenhouse is not his tears, it's his unbelievable bravery. if i were on the jury, i wouldn't just acquit him, i'd give the kid a medal. >> he was not guilty, he shouldn't have been indicted and we should move forward. i hope everyone will leave this young man alone now and let him go to living his life. i'm so proud of the jury and the jury system because it gave kyle rittenhouse a chance that all of these other talking heads on television didn't give him.

they had him convicted a long time ago. >> that chris christie praising the jury that acquitted kyle rittenhouse and buying into the broader notion that being prosecuted and getting acquitted was a violation of his rights after he killed two people. let's be very clear here. kyle rittenhouse got a lot more process than most people in the criminal justice system do, i mean a lot more. here's one example that comes to mind. it's in some sense a parallel example. it's the case of a left-wing antifa member who shot and killed a far-right trump supporter named aaron danielson on the streets of portland, oregon, last summer. horrible thing. and this was during the protest in that city sparked by the police killing of george floyd. a few days after that killing, members of the u.s. marshal task force located the shooter, 48-year-old michael rinell north of portland and unleashed a hail of bullets that left him dead in the street.

"the new york times" investigated the incident and learned details that raised questions about whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest him before killing him. then president donald trump even bragged about what seems to have essentially been -- and again, as best we can tell by the evidence assembled at the time and talking to witnesses, seems to have been at least in donald trump's understanding and possibly in reality an extra judicial killing. >> the u.s. marshals went in to get him and in a short period of time, they ended in a gun fight. this guy was a violent criminal. and the u.s. marshals killed him and i will tell you something, that's the way it has to be. there has to be retribution when you have crime like this. >> there has to be retribution when you have crime like this. this idea of retribution, meaning violence of violence of essentially vigilante justice, in this case backed by the state, is embodied by donald trump's world view and his followers and it is unraveling

this country. just look at the spectacle around kyle rittenhouse, celebration for a teenager who took a weapon of war to a protest and shot three people, killing two, rendering a child an orphan, fatherless. it was an act of stunning stupidity, recklessness and per dags and the right has turned him into a cause celeb. the mentality of his supporters is exactly what is producing our democratic decline, so noted by the stockholm-based think tank. that view, the celebration of a world in which vigilante justice is how society should look is a view that poses an existential threat to what we cherish about this country, and it must be defeated. and it must be defeat ed that's why, in difficult times, we provided one hundred and fifty million meals to feeding america. and now through the subaru share the love event, we're helping even more.

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could afford a lot. as paul butler notes in "the washington post" he had a $2 million defense fund. that fund enabled his lawyers to stage separate practice jury trials, also allowed them to retain o.j. simpson's jury consultant. it is not the same situation in another high-profile trial we are watching against the three men on trial for murder in georgia after they killed ahmaud arbery. paul butler joins me and heather mcghee, also the author of "the great the sum of us, what racism costs every one of us." paul, i thought the point that you made in that piece was really important and i think overlooked here in the broader context of the criminal justice system and how it tends to operate which is that he had a very high-priced defense and you

could see it in the trial. >> mr. rittenhouse beat his case because he had the best defense money can buy. that $2 million plus legal defense fund allowed his lawyers to use o.j. simpson's jury consultant. they got the same not guilty verdict. i would expect rittenhouse to now say he will spend his time looking for the real killer, except we already know he is the real killer. all of that money also helped rittenhouse hold two practice jury trials. that paid off with his well rehearsed testimony when he took the stand. most criminal defendants just don't have those resources. and rittenhouse wouldn't either but for people like donald trump and matt gaetz acting as cheerleaders for a man who gunned down three people. >> heather, there's something really i find -- again, i'm never -- i guess i'm never surprised by the depths that we tend to sink to, but there is

something truly dark and awful about the celebration. i think there are people out there who think he was not guilty in a technical legal sense or, you know, he shouldn't have been guilty but it's another thing to go from that to celebration of what this person did, and that is -- that's a kind of mainstream view among an enormous class of political and media leadership, which is incredibly dark both in what it says and what message it sends. >> that's exactly right. what we're seeing right now is self-interested elites spending billions of dollars broadly in the media and social media and in politics and they're trying to teach americans who think of themselves as white to reject democracy and the rule of law, to reject these sort of common norms if they have to share democracy with americans of color. there's a lot of evidence about that. but as we think about this evidence that we keep seeing stack up, the backsliding that

you spoke about at the top, as we think about all this evidence, my question has been throughout our history, who wins when democracy is defeated, right? who wins when property owners' rights are held above the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyday people, right? it is always the self-interested elites who are vying for the hearts and minds of white americans. the problem is, chris, they're winning in the republican party. the study by larry bartell shows that the majority of republicans think that traditional american way of life is disappearing so fast, this is demographic change, that we may have to use force to save it. a plurality thinks that patriotic americans will have to take the law into their own hands. this study was done and fielded before the big lie became the common sense on the right. >> you've got to take matters in into your own hands. and what's strange about this

moment too that i have to say, paul, and i've read some of your writing. you wrote an incredible essay about your time as a prosecutor and the way criminal justice works. people should read that, it's a great piece of write. and what's so complex and bizarre about this moment, if you come up in the left and particularly progressives, you're taught to be critical of institutions and the structural inequities that they can promote and the way that they can serve as a kind of force for maintaining inequality. but then also at the same time you want them to be better. there's this kind of a desire to just go around them now that i see on the right that is really scary, right? like don't -- go out into the street with your gun is a really dangerous message about what it means to live in a society with other people. >> yes. chris, this verdict does not mean that the jurors bought the boy scout image of rittenhouse

that the defense presented, that he was just in kenosha to help everybody. the verdict means they had reasonable doubt. they weren't 95% certain that rittenhouse was guilty. i can't imagine that those jurors who live in kenosha are happy about an immature and reckless 17-year-old bringing an assault-style weapon to patrol their streets. now rittenhouse will be the poster child, whether he deserves it or not for reactionary white men who want to take the law into their own hands, who want to bring assault weapons to black lives matter protest and who think that violence is a legitimate form of political discourse. >> heather, that part of it, like what kind of society we're going to live in and how we're going to be able to talk with each other and what we can do together is incredibly imperilled by the appearance of a person holding a gun like that in a public space. it just -- that's the other part of this that i find so

troubling. >> that's right. it's the second amendment over all other rights, including the first one, the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of protest, the freedom to raise your voice against state violence, which is what people were doing in kenosha. you know, this is a core question. are we going to have a multi-racial democracy in this country or are we going to have a country where you're banning history in 12 states, where you are banning protests, where you are making it permissible for people to drive through protesters. this is all laws that are being put in place in states across the country that i just spoke about with the cheerleading of the republican party because they see it as their path to minority rule. but the thing is that people don't have to despair, it's a very scary conversation. i want to make clear that people can make sure that we pass the freedom to vote act in this country. that we make sure that minority rule is not our future for the next three generations.

it's actually on the line right now. 150 democracy scholars put in a letter today in congress that was very well covered. they think this is sort of a twilight moment for american democracy if the freedom to vote act isn't passed. >> paul butler and heather mcghee, great to talk to you both tonight. thank you very much. coming up, why president biden's decision to keep a trump appointee as fed chair is one of the most important steps he could take for the nation's economic recovery. i'll talk to paul krugman about it, next. krugman ab out it, next on wealth p across your full financial picture. a plan with tax-smart investing strategies designed to help you keep more of what you earn. this is the planning effect.

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some will no doubt question why i'm renominating jay when he was the choice of the republican predecessor, why am i not picking a democrat, why am i not picking fresh blood or taking the fed in a different direction? put directly, at this moment of both enormous potential and enormous uncertainty for our economy we need stability and independence at the federal

reserve. jay has proven the independence that i value in the federal chair -- in the fed chair. >> president joe biden today renominated jerome powell for chairman of the federal reserve, entrusting a second term to the man who has so far guided u.s. monetary policy through a once in a generation, once in a century global pandemic. all eyes are on biden's pick because the fed chair is in charge of the central bank, which uses monetary policy to try and keep prices low. that means inflation low. the economy stable. and employment levels up. right now the pandemic has created a ton of lingering economic uncertainty including the largest increase in inflags in over 30 years. so many considered renominating jerome powell to be i acontroversial move even though it does represent continuity in very tumultuous times. paul krugman's a nobel prize-winning economist, opinion columnist for the "new york times" where he writes about macro economics and policy. he joins me now. i'm very curious to hear your thoughts on powell because i've seen arguments in a million different directions about

whether this was the right way to go. what do you think? >> yeah, it's interesting. the choice was between a monetary dove who thinks that inflation is probably transitory and is reluctant to raise rates and a monetary dove who thinks that inflation is probably transitory and reluctant to -- i mean, there really wasn't very much air between jay powell and lael brainard, who was the other likely choice on this. so in terms of the issues that seem likely right now, it just doesn't look like there's a big deal. yes, powell is a republican, or was a republican. i think he's rational and that almost makes him not a republican now. but in terms of his actual policy stance he's pretty much in line with a lot of the democratic party. it's not clear that there was a crucial policy issue at stake here. and biden probably just didn't want to fight on this particular front. >> yeah. i mean, the big question here, right? is what the fed does and what it's done. i think a lot of people -- we should divide out the different roles.

on the monetary policy front in terms of rates and in terms of more extraordinary means, asset purchases and bond purchases, things like that, that what the fed has done has been quite aggressive and i think people who are in the dovish category, i think you would be in that category, i would count myself in that category, people who really, really believe that full employment is so important as a justice issue, for working people in this country. powell's been pretty darn good. right? i mean, that's the general feeling. >> yeah. his response -- we came amazingly close to a real financial meltdown in march of last year, and powell just threw an enormous amount of money at it. he basically responded extremely aggressively, and he has been very much in the camp that says look, inflation might be a problem but let's not rush, we've made that mistake too often, of choking off an economic recovery before it really gets a chance to improve people's lives. so i think it's very, very hard

for anybody to -- for progressives to have a complaint there. he does have a history. the fed does regulate banks. it plays a role to some extent on other fronts. and powell has not always been what the people on the center-left would have wanted there. but it's not clear first of all that that's what's crucial now and secondly powell was a person who was a little slower on that front than you would have wanted ten years ago. >> we should say elizabeth warren has come out against him and says it is no secret i'll oppose his nomination. she says his failures on regulation, climate, and ethics makes the still vacant position of vice chairman, that specifically regulatory role. we have inflation. it's high. it's the highest it's been in 30 years. people don't like it.

there's a certain amount of -- there's a whipping up into a frenzy the media's partly doing, but also people can tell when things cost more. they don't like it. and this huge question before us which is does it persist, if so for how long and what the fed does about it. how are you thinking about that? >> okay. i mean, the -- this is a hard one. i mean, this is very different. the inflation fears of ten years ago were clearly silly. this time yeah, this is a tougher one. the best bet still -- i mean, we have not in fact had massive spending in this economy. spending has been not all that high relative to past trends. but what we've had is all of these constraints. constraints of clogged ports and insufficient warehouse space and then also the great resignation. a lot of people reluctant to go back to jobs. and nobody knows how long that lasts. there's a balancing of risks. there is a risk that inflation can become embedded, that it would be hard to get rid of. on the other hand, there's the risk that look, the american

rescue plan, the big spending is receding in the rearview mirror now and if you tighten you might be tightening just at the moment when the economy actually is going to start to falter. so you want people who are alert, who are -- i think the odds are that by this time next year we'll be saying what was all that about, why were people so worried about inflation? but we don't know that. but you want smart people at the fed who are alert to the possibilities. >> yeah. i think that's the bullish case. the "wall street journal" noting some of the supply chain problems appear to be unwinding. we know we've seen price rises across the country. also getting new big investment announcements about superconductor factories coming to the u.s. the standard macro economic idea is that demand should lead to more investment, right? that you should see productive capacity in supply increase to meet it. we're seeing some example of that. so i share that hope. no one really cares what i think. you're the one with the nobel prize. and powell's going to matter more than the two of us

combined. though paul krugman, it was great to have you on tonight. thank you very much. >> good to be on. thanks. >> that is "all in" on this monday night. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> everyone cares what you think, chris. >> i'm giving the chris hayes house view on the macroeconomic outlook for the next six months. i'm just reading stuff like everyone else. >> it's the only one i'd listen to. come on. don't sell yourself short. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. it's good to have you here. shotguns are legal. sawed-off shotguns are not legal. the national firearms act of 1934 put in place new federal rules. 1934. against owning whole big classes of weapons and weapons accessories that were believed to be associated with serious crime. so that 1934 law included things like machine guns and silencers and sawed-off